CHAPTER III.
PORTER SHOWS HIS TEETH.
It was eight o'clock in the evening when Merry, Clancy, and Ballard reached the mine and went hunting for the office of Pardo, the superintendent.
The surface activities of a big gold mine, in full operation at night, are as weird as they are interesting. The boys were deeply impressed as they looked down into the valley where the mining, milling, and cyaniding were going on.
The stamp mill, where the ore was pounded to powder and robbed of its gold, was a huge, ramshackle structure. Although it had a framework of heavy timbers, yet the strong skeleton was but loosely covered with boards. Through wide cracks and many gaps in the sides of the building a flood of light poured out, and the thunder of a hundred stamps filled the camp.
Glimmering lights dotted the shadowy depths of the valley—some shining through the windows of rough dwellings and others moving about in the hands of workers. From the open door of, a blacksmith shop poured a yellow glow from a forge, and against the roar of the stamps arose the musical clink of hammer on anvil.
This blacksmith shop happened to be the first building the boy passed on entering the camp. They stopped and asked the smith where they would find the superintendent's office. The brawny fellow turned from the anvil, stepped to the door, and pointed.
"There's the super's office, younker," he said to Frank, "where ye see them two lights close together. Mebby he's there, an' mebby he's over to town; anyways, the assistant super is on deck."
A person had to shout in order to make himself heard in the steady tumult of the mill. Frank bawled his thanks, and he and his two comrades pressed on toward the twin lights indicated by the blacksmith.
These lights, it was presently discovered, came through two windows of a small office building. A man was sitting out in front, tilted comfortably back in a chair and smoking a pipe. He was a vague figure in the shadows, and the visitors could not see very much of him.
"Is this Mr. Pardo's office?" Frank inquired, stepping close to the man and lifting his voice.